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30 June
29 June
I need to get some work done on an essay for The Common Review that has been in limbo for quite some time.
Plus friends are coming to town. Getting away from my study for a while seems like a good idea.
Last weekend, we went to a BBQ cookoff in downtown Washington. In the midst of the heat and the humidity, there was somebody
dressed as Tony the Tiger, engaged in dutiful frolicking. I wonder if they insulate the inside of the head, to keep people
from hearing the obscenities.
28 June
Today's column...In which is revealed the question that has helped my get a handle on the constant turmoil of daily life:
"What Would Joseph McCabe Do?"
Usual answer: He'd manage to get a lot more accomplished before lunch than I will all day.
27 June
Please consider bookmarking it.
Thank you for your attention to this development.
Last week, while enthusing over the great boxed sets of jazz, hillbilly, and country swing available from Proper
Records, I expressed astonishment that the prices were so low. Ray Davis, of Pseudopodium, writes to explain:
"Sadly, it's pretty simple. The UK doesn't suffer with our overextended Sonny Bono copyright
terms. Year by year, as more works come into the UK public domain, Proper and JSPare able to release cleaned-up well-documented
new box sets for no more than manufacturing. You could track the public domain expansion in popular music just
by monitoring their catalog. In the USA, where the public domain has been frozen at 1923, we're stuck with gray-market bootlegs,
expensive profiteering, or often no access at all."
My hunch was that it might be something along those lines. Thanks to Ray for filling in the details.
23 June
The memorial gathering for Jimmy Weinstein in DC mentioned at the start of the column on Tuesday was a lot more informal than it sounded. The turnout was seven people. Everyone else knew him a lot better
than I did. Most of them had worked at In These Times in Chicago. In the interests of discretion, I will
only indicate that the office history of a left-wing newsweekly is the stuff of a picaresque novel.
The meal consisted of dishes from a cookbook that Jimmy had prepared a few years ago. Evidently his recipes
and his editorials had something in common -- a certain vagueness, perhaps, on some particulars.
As a friend said afterwards, it was actually a wake. A sad occasion, but not sombre. As people recalled, he liked to
call himself a "pathological optimist." Maybe it was in that spirit.
Now I've got to put together a tiny item for ITT's memorial issue. It has probably been five years
since I've written anything for them. This might not be the very last time. But then again, it might very well.
In any event, I'm about to resubscribe, and hope a lot of other people do, too.
An interview with Deborah Reed-Danahay,
author of Locating Bourdieu
22 June
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Sartre's birth. It was interesting to come across a link to an article on him in a British paper, The Independent. And in particular to learn from it that "Scott McLemee . . . recently chaired an academic symposium on Sartre in the US."
Now that's why you read a newspaper -- for the astonishing bits of news. I hadn't realized that
I had done any such thing. (Not recently, nor ever.)
It turns out that I may be even busier than it seems.
21 June
The death of Jimmy Weinstein wasn't exactly unexpected. A mutual friend mentioned the cancer a few months,
a kind that is swift and fatal.
Still, the idea of writing about him came at pretty much the last possible minute. Dropped everything yesterday to bang
out this piece.
We stayed with Jimmy and his wife in Chicago some years back, and we talked on the phone from time to
time. He was disappointed that I didn't review his last book -- or write for In These Times again, after 2001.
Those weren't a political choices, but rather, in a sense, economic. A matter of the limits of available time and
energy.
We weren't close friends, by any means, but I'd been thinking a lot lately about his book on the Socialist
Party. (The historical literature on it is still bizarrely thin on the ground. There's Weinstein....and a few
others. His study looms.) It would have been good to have his insights for my work in progress.
Why the hell didn't I try to call him? Not to get his thoughts, but just to say hello, and goodbye?
20 June
There is no value quite like that of a Proper Records boxed set. I'm not sure how they do it. For about $20-25, you get four disks of what in some cases are pretty rare recordings
-- mainly of jazz, though what I really love are the collections of old country, blues, western swing, and hillbilly
music.
Particular favorites from their list are Hillbilly Boogie (see this review) and the compilation of recordings from the golden age of western swing.
Being something of a "rockist" (do people still use that word?), I have often been prone to hearing the
moments when hillbilly music is about one beat away from turning into Carl Perkins.
This is an aesthetic liability, to be sure. It's best just to listen to it on its own terms. The box sets
from Proper are an affordable musical education.
17 June
A friend pointed out, not long ago, that I am prone to speaking in terms of anniversaries -- constantly measuring the
distance of the present moment from some temporal landmark or other. As if in some way to extract some meaning from
the interval, though (arguably) the recurrent need to do so suggests that the effort itself is part of the problem.
A melancholic tendency, no doubt about it.
Well, so be it. As of later this month, it will have been a quarter century since I left my podunk small town
(with its incredibly crappy high school) in East Texas to spend six weeks in the Telluride Association Summer Program at Cornell University, reading about the revolutions of 1848 with a couple of professors and around 15 other kids.
I was 17. There is no way to express what it was like suddenly to be around people who didn't think it was weird
to read books. It was a taste of the life ahead. I hated going back to Wills Point. Stayed in touch with those friends
until leaving for college, then lost track of all of them, one by one.
Made my first girlfriend that summer. She was 16. I have no idea what happened to her. We studied Flaubert's Sentimental
Education. I should reread it, but am a little bit afraid to, somehow.
16 June
Ended up having to use the word "transgression" in today's column. One of those 1990s expressions of the kind that set my teeth on edge at the time, and still do, kind of.
But it seemed inescapable in this case. And anyway its invocation here is pretty pedestrian and carries none
of the hipsterati-reading-Bataille overtone ca. 1995.
Haven't seen the article from the Chronicle that broke the story -- I don't have a password -- but
understand it was written by Tom Bartlett, one of the best people there.
15 June
It's completely tangential to anything I'm working on, now, but Don Marquis is a recent rediscovery of mine. That's
"rediscovery" because I first read him as a kid, then recalled him some years ago while thinking about The
Factory Songs of Mr. Toad, a volume of poems of my friend (the late) Marty Glaberman, which I suspected were heavily influenced by Marquis.
14 June
The occasional obligatory "things of interest on the
web"
item that goes up when I'm busy either writing
or procrastinating
(not always a distinction with a difference)
13 June
I've long been fond of the History News Network, and not just because it is one of the few websites around that make this one look well-designed by comparison.
In particular, I look at least once a day at Cliopatria, the group blog where, if memory serves, Timothy Burke used to write quite a bit. He hasn't in a while, seems like. Come
to think of it, he's finishing a book now. (There may be some causal relationship involved here.)
I have almost no idea what this actually means, and my impression is that nobody else does, either. That's cool. It takes
a lot of the pressure off.
Many thanks to Ralph Luker for the invitation. I'm going to exploit this opportunity mercilessly.
For example, I am studying the development of newspaper-printing equipment from 1900-1935. This'll give
me a venue to weigh in with views some might find controversial....
From Thursday: A tribute to the awesome powers of the librarian. There's a chance this column may end up playing midwife to a group blog for academic librarians. (Such is the
word on the grapevine, anyway.) At present I am enjoying a momentary and unprecedented feeling of efficacy, on however
modest a scale.
10 June
Q: Your home page recently presented a small and somewhat blurry image that proved, on inspection, to be the
logo for Gew-Gaw Finery, makers of the notorious "Rick Perlstein Wearing the 'Scott McLemee Fan Club' T-Shirt" Fan Club T-Shirt. Was this
an advertisement?
A: Well, now, that would depend on what you mean by "advertisement."
Q: Please do not elaborate on that point. Would you please comment on reports that you are forcing the Gew-Gaw
crew to work in basement sweatshop conditions, while you wear a plutocratic top hat and count your share of the profits?
A: The whole thing is the Gew-Gawista's doing. If they are working in a basement factory (and I'm not saying
they are, just speaking hypothetically here) my impression is that it would probably be organized on anarcho-syndicalist lines.
It is true that I have been offered a cut of the profits for certain items, but declined. I do not own a top hat.
Q: Is it true that Rick Perlstein has just published a new book?
A: Yes. It is called The Stock Broker and the Superjumbo. Here is an excerpt. My own belief is that the ideal title for a book about seeking to transform the Democratic Party into a vigorous
instrument for progressive social change would be We Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy. But then again, nobody asked.
9 June
Aside from my column for today being about academic librarians, IHE has an article about the University of Chicago bucking the "bookless library" trend by spending money on, well, books.
This wasn't planned. I think it's something in the air, or possibly an effect of sunspot activity. Not nearly enough
gets explained by reference to sunspot activity, so upon reflection that is the hypothesis I'm going to endorse.
**
I've been meaning to give links to the Bibliothecary Blog and Long Sunday, both of which I like a lot, despite (or perhaps because of) the total disconnect of sensibility between them.
**
This means no money, a very limited increase in my audience, and the obligation to condense whatever I would
have to say into an absurdly tiny space. It would also be a distraction from the book I am writing.
On the other hand, it's only four times a year.
So the answer is, yes. The first column will appear this fall, I think.
Damn you, sunspots!
8 June
Which is true. While Rita is off at the SLA meeting -- that's Special Libraries Association, not the one
with the guns -- I'm going on my own nostalgia trip, which involves listening to stuff I loved about twenty
years ago: the Replacements, Husker Du, Black Flag, and Sonic Youth from back before whatever went wrong with
them happened. (Nothing after Goo counts for much, to my ears, but "Kill Yr Idols" still sounds...well,
disruptive.)
Also recommended: While I have no interest in what influenced Morrissey, as such, there was no way not to get
this album, which contains the other side to Patti's Smith's "Piss Factory" debut ( the original NY punk single from 1974) -- namely her rendition of "Hey Joe." The opening poem and additional lyrics make
it a song about Patty Hearst.
You can read the words here, but the cold transcript does it no justice. As an account of Patty Hearst, it's kind of nuts -- albeit
in a way typical enough of certain countercultural themes. But I love it in any case.
Things that I remember, not with nostalgia exactly (that implies longing) but with a sense of how much
distance can exist between points in time.
7 June
No column today. For the past few days, I've had some tendonitis in the fingers on both hands -- probably from playing
guitar -- and have for the most part tried to avoid typing very much.
It's starting to heal, seems like. But the situation means falling way behind on way too many things.
For now, you might take a look at the interesting discussion that has taken shape in the comments section
for Thursday's column, apropos the "unexpurgated" edition of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
Rita is off in Toronto for a major convention of librarians. I've been to such assemblies before
-- and having watched them en masse, would say that yes, you can indeed identify librarians
at a distance. It's the shoes and the hair.
(Not a criticism, of course. I will never say a bad thing about librarians. Besides, I like the look. My first thoughts
on seeing Rita were: "She really looks like a librarian. Wonder if she'd go out with me?")
All summed up in two key words: "microwave burrito."
6 June
At 3 and 6 o'clock, Digger is robustly demonic. At 9, he wears an expression of panic. By 12, he is crushed by a large
tablet of anti-fungus medication.
The triumphalism of the drug company's message is undermined, however, by the circularity
of presentation.
Form trumps theme. 'Twas ever thus.
3 June
2 June
Excessive comfort can undermine the creative process.
Tom Bartlett understands this:
"I am writing today's entry from our basement. It is dark down here; in fact, I can barely see the keyboard.
My padded chair has been replaced with a hard, unstable stool. Instead of black tea with milk I am drinking Mountain Dew from
a dirty glass. I haven't showered for days. My skin itches. I am listening to the radio -- the best of the 80s, 90s, and today.
My pants are a size too small. I have been subsisting entirely off of bologna and Cheeze-Its. Whenever I worry that I might
be getting too comfortable I poke myself in the leg with a tack I keep nearby just for this purpose. I think it's working.
It's hard to tell because I'm not wearing my glasses (helps with disorientation) so I can't actually read what I've written
so far. But I'm willing to bet it's pretty darn good."
1 June
And last week, I wrote two pieces following the death of Paul Ricoeur. Here's the first, and here's the second. Have had some messages of appreciation from folks who studied with Ricoeur. As for the British academic who
called my efforts "crass," all's I can say is: Dude, you have no idea.
Newsday recently asked for a brief "recommended reading" tip for the summer -- something appropriate
for unwinding. It seemed like a good occasion to plug one of Charles Portis's lesser-known comic novels.
If the name is not familiar, check this out.
31 May
Memorial Day weekend is a noisy time in Washington, DC. It's not just the roar of the Harley-Davidsons. The air
is also filled with the loud, drunken, and profanity-laced voices of leather-skinned bikers with lots
of tattoes. Not to mention their husbands.
The place is returning to normal now. I'll update the running list of my recent publications as soon as possible. Didn't
really get the weekend off, but I'm still trying to catch up on more or less everything.
Good news: Inside Higher Ed now has an RSS feed. I don't want to give away any state secrets, but the number of visitors this past month was, in
a word, astounding. No doubt this new development will only help.
27 May
An announcement to everyone who wanted, some while back, to get the Scott McLemee Fan Club T-Shirt, or who at least told
me they did, perhaps just to be nice:
For those pursuing meta, Robb offers the famous "Rick Perlstein Wearing the 'Scott McLemee Fan Club T-Shirt' T-Shirt."
I particularly like the part in the ad copy where Robb calls me "manly," a pleasing departure from the more familiar
expression, "wussy."
25 May
Okay, one last Digger the Dermatophyte-related news item. Apart, that is, from announcing the inauguration of
the Digger Fan Club page.
Rita made a bid at e-Bay for a Digger promotional clock, and won it. The range of dermatophyte-related promotional tchotchkery
is not large, evidently, though perhaps that may change now that he has hit the road, on tour.
I am very fortunate to be married to someone who not only puts up with my occasional bouts of eccentric obsession but
even joins in, once in a while.
24 May
It was good to have a week away from writing the column. And it's good to be back to doing it.
As it turns out, the timing is either good or terrible. This week, I'm devoting it to the news of Paul Ricoeur's death.
The first part is an experiment in irony -- suggesting ways to abuse him now that he's gone. On Thursday, I'll undertake something
more serious, if even more hopeless, by trying to explain some of what was going on in his work, in terms that might
be comprehensible to the utterly uninitiated, even.
In other news....Adam Kotsko, who just got his M.A., will be publishing his translation of the "basement tapes"
version of Derrida's The Gift of Death with the University of Chicago Press. (This was part of his thesis.)
Hearty congratulations to him on this news. And a request, or a suggestion -- a word to the wise, in any case.
Adam is interested in Pasolini. One of the last things that Sartre managed to write after he went blind (mentioned
by Simone de Beauvoir in the memoir part of Adieux) was an essay on Pasolini. I think it's in either volume
9 or 10 of his Situations.
This is not available in English, and it should be. It would probably not take that long to do. My guess is that the
translator would have his choice of venues for publishing it.
So that idea is what I've got to give, instead of a graduation present. Bet he'd rather have cash though.
23 May
Had a long talk on Friday with Eric Hayot, who teaches at the U. of Arizona. (He was in town visiting family.)
I'd interviewed him by e-mail for a column that'll run before long, and am an enthusiast for Printculture, a group blog he's involved in. But this was the first time we'd met in person. It was cold and
rainy, so when we headed off to a coffee place, I chose the one that is closest -- a place with a sort of faux southwest/adobe/cow-skull thing going
on.
Eric didn't mind. Either that or he was pretty cool about it.
Meanwhile, in other news, the promotional knicknack featuring Digger the Dermatophyte that Rita got me for my birthday
arrived. It may be that in some regards Digger is a variant of my writing demon. Only there is no prescription offering fast relief.
19 May
I've been meaning to link to Emdashes, the blog of my old friend Emily Gordon.
Wait, that maybe didn't come out right. I've known Emily since she was assistant books editor at Newday. Which
was a while ago. Actually she's a young whippersnapper.
Just wrote a little item for the "summer reading" column at Newsday. My editor said, "Think vacation reading,
not The Arcades Project." (Well, while I might well take Benjamin on a vacation, couldn't say much about his
work in 300 words anyway.) Watch this spot for details on my selection.
Or better, go take a look at the increasingly addictive Minor Tweaks.
17 May
I'm sort of obsessed with J. Robert Oppenheimer at the moment. Was interested in him even before reviewing a couple of
books for Newsday, for a piece that just ran. Over the weekend, we watched an interesting -- if on a couple of points not quite accurate -- film called The Day After
Trinity. Plus I just checked out a volume of his lectures and am reading Philip Rieff's essay on him.
No column this week. Not that I'm exactly idle. Apart from reporting and writing a piece for Slate -- to run
this week, if I can get the lead out -- I need to finish a long-gestating essay for The Common Review.
Meanwhile, in other news, I see that the Kinky Librarian has moved her blog and no longer has that fetching drawing of herself as bat-winged babe-ette. This is unfortunate.
It appears on my home page for a limited time only.
16 May
Perhaps because of a lack of direct experience with any sort of toe fungus, I have developed a certain affection
for Digger the Dermatophyte, whose television appearances are richly entertaining and make me glad to be
able to rewind. (You can watch and read about him here.)
The commercial also makes me nostalgic for the fall of 2004 -- in so many ways a simpler time for everyone.
Knowing of my nostalgia and fascination, Rita spent a fair bit of time recently trying to find Digger-related
items on eBay.
At some point in the next few days, I should have a promotional momento in which Digger is being crushed by a gigantic
(relative to his size) tablet of Lamisil.
You might think that Digger t-shirts and baseball caps are also available, but you would be wrong.
13 May
Assorted links for your browsing pleasure:
In the event that you cannot afford to have Paris Hilton to stop by your party (or cannot stand the thought of her doing
so), you might want to consider making arrangements with my friend Tom Bartlett. His fees and conditions are quite reasonable.
Orlando Hotpockets, scourge of the soi-disant Underground Literary Alliance: "They think they are so smart just because
they went to some fancy community college."
12 May
I'm "on hiatus" all next week. This is like being "on vacation" except for the part where I have to work my ass off.
It's not even like I won't be concerned with the column. That's actually a major part of the reason for it
-- taking time to brainstorm.
10 May
Tuesday's column is an extract from the forthcoming book Yes, I am a Nerd (Pocket Protector Press, 2005).
8 May
Last week, this website endorsed the idea that, in a biopic about David Horowitz, the lead role should be offered to Ron Jeremy, a.k.a. "the hardest working
prostate in show business."
After careful reflection, I am not entirely sure about that.
4 May
It was twenty years ago this month that I called the headquarters of Socialist Action in San Francisco only to find out
that the group had split. It was bewildering. It took a few weeks to figure out which of the resulting groups to support.
A tiny handful of us in the student movement in Austin had started reading International Viewpoint (the magazine
of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International) and considered ourselves sympathizers of Socialist Action, which was
one of the (at that point) two organizations consisting of people who had been thrown out of the SWP when it dumped Trotskyism.
The new SWP theory consisted mainly of going "Yeah, we were about to say that!" whenever Fidel Castro made a speech.
We considered the SWP a pretty dimwitted outfit in any case -- despite liking Mike Rose, who was the campus organizer
for the Young Socialist Alliance, the SWP's youth group. Mike had advanced multiple schlerosis and scooted around
campus in a wheelchair with anti-intervention bumper stickers on it. By the early 1980s, he was a kind of mobile landmark
around campus.
Eventually I want to write something about Mike, but am afraid to get started, for fear of bawling. He was a wonderful
guy, and to see him argue with the Young Conservatives was always inspiring. (He died about a dozen years ago.) Naturally, Mike
was disappointed that some of us were taking up Trotskyism at just the time the proletarian vanguard had decided to dump it.
He had to get permission to keep talking to us, which only confirmed our sense that the SWP was basically a creep outfit. We
had learned about the purges of founding members during 1981-83, which in many ways resembled the
way the original Trotskyists had been driven out of the CP.
Anyway, Socialist Action was one of the groups formed by expelled members. A few of us had started reading
its press, which was at least somewhat better than the SWP's paper, The Militant, though that wasn't saying
much. More to the point, we looked into the international movement and Ernest Mandel in particular. Reading his
book From Stalinism to Eurocommunism had helped me understand why the American CP always just
supported whatever hairball the Democrats coughed up at election time. And in general, Mandel and the USec journal International
Viewpoint helped us see that there might be more to Trotskyism than the general creepiness of the SWP, let alone the
Spartacist "Hail Red Army in Afghanastan" League.
So out of the growing anti-Reagan student movement (swamped, unfortunately, by UT's army of pro-Reagan,
Izod-wearing clones), a few of us constituted a Fourth Internationalist circle, and it seemed like a matter of time before
we joined Socialist Action.
Which, as I say, turned out to be undergoing a split. Nobody had told us, of course. By the time I called,
sometime in May 1985, it was a done deal.
Well, we ended up joining the pro-Mandel wing, consisting of about sixty people nationwide. It was called
Socialist Unity, and it had a magazine of the same name, which published no more than two or three issues. In early 1986
we fused with the International Socialists and Workers Power to form a new group called Solidarity, which is still around.
I remained a member through about 1992, and still give them money from time to time, and also do so with New Politics,
which is plugging along. (Not that, like, I have any now. So don't ask.)
All of this comes to mind after having recently read, among other things, an old pamphlet about the origins of the Young Socialist Alliance. The folks who made it available online suggest that the author's name might be a pseudonyn for Tim Wohlforth.
As a matter of fact, parts of it are more or less identical to Wohlforth's account of the same period, in a memoir he published about twenty years later. So that does seem like a fair guess as to authorship.
2 May
Woo-hoo! I'm only doing one column for Inside Higher Ed this week, the one on Thursday.
That's not the only writing for publication that I'll do. But still, it's a relief.... That means the brain
will only have to boil gently, not endure day after day in the pressure cooker.
The other day, a friend said: "You aren't really doing a column. These things are features and essays. You should
get them to cut you back to doing one a week."
Well, in principle, yes, there's something to that -- though I don't thing "writing a column column" necessarily
means just free associating (or doing the George Will bit of running the week's headlines through a copy of Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations.) As for the frequency, well, for now that is not my call.
In general, I'm trying to keep the format fluid, open, experimental. But it's not like writing here, for this site's audience
of a few hundred people. As noted two weeks ago, I take notes and outline and draft the column by hand (whereas this site is just slapped together impulsively by way of procrastination)
and otherwise hold each piece to certain standards.
Otherwise, why bother? You do this kind of thing either with the goals of getting wealthy and/or laid
(to paraphrase Freud very slightly) or from some less extrinsic motivation. Neither big bucks nor booty are going
to somebody who writes about Bakhtin or deconstruction or the history of academic freedom. This is sad. But such
is the world.
Anyway, I've been doing it for three months now -- which works out to two dozen pieces,
give or take. Every now and then, a particular column seems to make a modest splash, blogospherewise. But I've
given up on trying to figure out which ones will do that. It's enough work just to write without worrying about that sort
of thing. As ever, the principle is simply to write something I would actually want to read. (If anybody else likes
it, fine. And if not, ditto.)
In any case, it has been a demanding three months. The next three will be tougher, because I'm now starting
to work on a book. Not to mention that APSA paper and, probably (we haven't been given thumbs-up on this yet) a
talk for a panel at MLA.
Somebody told me that a grad student who heard my talk at the Cultural Studies Association took it to
be a denunciation of academics. No, just the ones too stupid or cowed to be able to grasp the idea that the university
imposes its own forms of "trained incapacity" (as Kenneth Burke puts it).
I sure hope that poor fellow never reads Pierre Bourdieu. It would give him a nervous breakdown.
***
Adam Kotsko finally explains something about Hardt and Negri's Multitude that vaguely bothered me, but
couldn't quite find expression, when I worked on an article about it last year:
Which seems less like a coincidence, the more I think about it. Something a bit apocalyptic and unworldly about that
book.....
1 May
He who wants to make revolution must accept Mao Tse-tung's thought and act in accordance with it..... Once the workers,
peasants and soldiers master the sharp weapon of Mao Tse-tung's thought, all monsters have no ground left to stand on. All
their intrigues and plots will be thoroughly exposed, their ugly features will be brought into the broad light of day and
their dream to restore capitalism will be utterly shattered.
Jiefangjun Bao, "Mao Tse-tung's Thought Is the
Telescope and Microscope of Our Revolutionary Cause,"
Peking Review (1966)
Comrade Chiang Ching said: Imperialism is moribund capitalism, parasitic and
rotten. Modern revisionism is a product of imperialist policies and a variety of capitalism. They cannot produce any works
that are good. Capitalism has a history of several centuries; nevertheless, it has produced only a pitiful number of "classics."
They have created some works modeled after the "classics," but these are stereotyped and can no longer appeal to the people,
and are therefore completely on the decline. On the other hand, there are some things that really flood the market, such as
rock-and-roll, jazz, strip-tease, impressionism, symbolism, abstractionism, fauvism, modernism -- there's no end to them --
all of which are intended to poison and paralyze the minds of the people. In a word, there is decadence and obscenity to poison
and paralyze the minds of the people.
"Literature and Art Workers Hold Rally
for Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"
Peking Review
(1966)
Meow? Meow? Mao....
Webster the Cat (Marxist-Leninist)
Every morning, approx. 5 a.m.
27 April
One of these days we are going to have to come up with a name for our reading group, which consists of a mixture of
labor organizer and writers (including a labor-organizer/writer) plus one lawyer. We meet once a month, more
or less. If we share any common political perspective, it is the belief that left-wing politics should not involve screeching.
Yelling? Yes, occasionally. But not screeching.
Last night, we discussed a selection of essays by Stuart Hall analyzing Thatcherism, and were joined by Michael
Bérubé, who points out at his blog that, even after three hours of trying, we couldn't "figure out how the progressive left can form a hegemonic
historic bloc."
This is true. The closest we came up with was something like that Steve Martin bit about the book called How to
Be a Millionaire and Never Pay Taxes, with the opening line, "First, get a million dollars...."
26 April
Yesterday, Graham Larkin did an opinion piece that got into the question of whether David Horowitz is best described ( per Harry Frankfurt's categories) as a liar or a bullshitter. It makes me happy to see the discussion finally being framed in appropriate terms.
In the case of Freakonomics, the knock-off is not Mafia (professional counterfeit) quality. Which is too bad,
because it would be interesting to know what the substance and logic of Levitt's work might be. I hazard an estimate in the
review. Still, it's something better worked out by the author. Levitt should not have let himself be talked into letting his
name be associated with the book.
24 April
Back from Tucson....Or rather, back from air transport limbo, since the ratio of time in planes/airports to time at the
Cultural Studies Assocation conference was almost two to one.
Will write something up about CSA for the column later this week. My talk at the plenary on Friday night seemed
to go pretty well. In discussing the relationship between cultural studies and journalism, I tried to make two points:
(1) For all the failings of the latter as a profession, at least some of the problem in communication are an effect of
a certain fear of communication with outsiders that is more or less basic to the socialization of (some kinds of) academics.
(2) There is a strong tendency to think that, by looking a given artifact of popular culture through an approved conceptual
template, you are engaged in the "production of knowledge." The result is the kind of cultural studies that I call "ethnography
for lazy people." It might be a good idea instead to go out there and do what, in my line, is called "reporting."
Which is to say, asking questions of people, and using the responses as a way of formulating new questions to
ask them, and so on. This can be time-consuming and irritating for everybody involved. But it'd probably yield something more
valuable than the insight that people on Survivor are gendered, or whatever.
The difference in time zones was not in my favor. By the time the plenary was over, I found it difficult
to answer a relatively simple question from a friend during an informal get-together.
All in all, though, it was a good experience. The trip probably did some good for Inside Higher Ed. So
far, we haven't done squat to promote the site, advertisement-wise, anyway. But it's really catching on, seems like.
Now it's back to the writing mines....
21 April
I'm off to Tucson -- mostly to be a fly on the wall at the Cultural Studies Association, except for Friday night,
when I'm supposed to pontificate.
Not much chance of updating anything here until next week.
Thanks to Moby Lives and to Ralph Luker for the links on Wednesday, which in turn led to other sites picking up the previous column. Have had some interesting
messages from folks who have their own quirks or compulsions in getting thoughts on paper. I'm not totally against composing
at the word processor, of course. But even when that happens, I always end up printing it out and marking the bejezus out
of the ms. as part of the process of revising -- not just corrections, but major structural changes, usually.
Also, it's a pleasant surprise to learn that this site is now listed in the blogroll at About Last Night. My dire mood is lifting.
Now I just have to finish drafting that talk for the cultural-studies profs. In general it's
best not to read a speech, of course. But experience suggests that it's best to have a text so
thoroughly worked out that I've got the structure, and much of the language, down more or less by heart.
As it turns out, I will have three and a half solid hours of sitting around the Chicago airport on
Thursday. That seems like plenty of time to fine tune it...
19 April
Well, I ought to know better than to let this site turn into a kind of public diary -- as with Monday's entry, one of
my periodic bursts of introspective worry about how things have been going over the past three months.
There's still part of me that doesn't consider anything appearing here as having been "published."
Perhaps it is not quite rational to think it, but the bloggish component of this site feels like kind of a
backstage area (per Erving Goffman). Or a bulletin board for a few friends to look at, or something. Clearly
that is not quite the case.
Turns out, I'm introspecting in front of parties unknown. A risky thing to do, especially if you are being obtuse about
it.
Just for the record: Nothing written here Monday ws meant as complaint. I'm just trying to figure
out what to do to push my work to the next level of whatever development is possible.
Lots of stuff in the files that is unfinished. Things that I mean to try to do. There are three books taking shape
-- slowly, slowly -- and I'm not going to get out of actually writing them.
This can all get kind of hard to deal with, sometimes. It takes patience, and also some degree of
blind faith. I'm not doing particularly well on either score at the moment. As Emerson said, our moods do not believe
in one another.
18 April
Last week, I wrote two columns, a review for Newsday, and drafted part of my speech for the plenary
session at the Cultural Studies Association meeting in Tucson (this coming Friday).
Between now and Friday, I have to finish that speech. At some point, it may be necessary to find out what a "plenary
session" is. That's still a puzzler.
And I need to write two more columns, read a bunch of photocopies of stuff about "authoritarian populism" by Stuart
Hall, and make at least some dent in a couple of recent books about Robert Oppenheimer that I'm supposed to review next for
Newsday. Plus do some reporting for an article for Slate.
Okay, a question: Why, despite evidence to the contrary, do I feel like such a sluggard?
That's my mood lately. Coming up fast on three months since I left the Chronicle -- though it
feels more like a year.
Seems like the batteries are starting to run a bit low. At the same time, it often feels like something really interesting
could be about to happen. That things I've been trying to learn how to do for years and years are finally somewhat less
impossible.
Who knows? That might just be wishful thinking. Everything always turns out to be three times harder than it ought
to be -- and to take four times as long.
Try to be patient. There are no guarantees. Write the day's pages and hope for the best. The important thing is not to
expect "success" or large-scale recognition. (That'd be sweet, but is not to be counted on. It just makes for
anger of a fairly comprehensive and gut-wrenching kind.)
God knows I'm broke. At the strictly material level, I gave up a lot three months ago. It would be nice to
think that the Muses are impressed and will reward me for this. If so, they are doing a really good job of
hiding my birthday present.
Next month, I turn 42. After all this while, I know better than to expect the world to come through. (It's entirely
possible that things are as good as they are going to get.) But if the Muses stand me up, this midlife thing
is going to be plenty damned rough.
14 April
A reader has written in pointing out the repulsive graphic at the so-called Underground Literary Alliance site, in which
they portray themselves as the lone Chinese student defying the tanks of Mainstream Lit. (As if the garbage they write
weren't grandiose, pathetic, and stupid enough.) A case of splitting the difference between the
idiotic and the morally disgusting; see the image in question here.
12 April
It occurs to me that tossing off a reference to Vyshinsky like that is not such a good idea. You never know if some non-Trot
young 'uns might come by, and have no idea....So here's Horowitz's personal role model doing what came naturally. Slandering, making shit up, condemning folks to death.
Not that D. Ho (as someone at Berube's site dubbed him) actually gets to condemn anybody to death.
Still, he can dream. And they are such exciting dreams!
Call him out on his fabrications. Ask him if his middle name is Vyshinsky. That sort of thing. It'll piss him off more
than the pie ever would.
You might even be the person to make his head explode. And if that happens, everybody wins.
11 April
An insignificant event in many ways, albeit a tasty lunch, as I recall. And there was a definite sense of doing
my part to bring together two sectors of the Quality Lit Biz (as Seymour Krim once called it) that have not always been
on the most amicable of terms. Actually the literary bloggers have been pretty favorable regarding Newsday's book
coverage, come to think of it. But in general, literary blog discourse often treats the people running newspaper review
sections as, de facto, The Enemy.
Having written for newspapers for a long time, I certainly have my own gripes, but don't consider the editors
as a malignant force. The shrinking of sections, overemphasis on certain titles, etc. tends to be the product
of decisions and pressures coming from on high -- often, I'm sure, by people who'd just as soon scrap book coverage
altogether, or just run wire copy about things that are already best-sellers.
Anyway, the whole litblog/newspaper, East Coast/West Coast conflict thing was not in evidence at the lunch.
(Increase the peace, y'all.) And at a certain point, Mark told us about a project on the part of literary
bloggers who wanted to do what they could to win exposure for some work of fiction that might otherwise
not get the attention it deserved. It was all very secretive. We were sworn to embargo news of the plan.
In the meantime, I've expected word of it to leak out. But it seems as if the people involved have been really
disciplined about keeping the whole thing under wraps.
Normally I wouldn't want to depart from the regular Tuesday/Thursday schedule of my column -- nor do two of them in a
row on a literary topic. But it seemed worth departing from all that to do this column on the project today.
7 April
I had the unfortunate experience of reading this story while eating oatmeal. The laughter caused hot oatmeal to be forced through my nose. I am presently trying
to figure out who to sue.
In short: if you believe any part of this scenario, then you are just the sort of individual who would
be interested in a certain real-estate opportunity -- it involves buried pirate treasure -- which we ought to discuss
just as soon as possible.
UPDATE. There was so much discussion -- all of it bullshit of the rankest ordure -- that I had, finally, to say something.
6 April
There is not a Pulitzer Prize intended to pay tribute to the author of a particular sentence appearing
in an American newspaper article.
This I understand, and fully accept.
Such an award should be created, however, and just as soon as possible, in order honor the following line from
a recent feature appearing in The Des Moines Register:
"Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City police officer and longtime investigator on the Gosch case,
said becoming a White House reporter is completely in character for a former victim of the pedophilia ring."
Of course, a better reporter could have revised the article to make this the lede.
**
The other day, I mentioned how, once the worst part of the flu had passed, Rita brought home some
Ritz crackers.
For a while, they were the solid food on the menu, pretty much.
I sure did love those crackers.
5 April
Actually had a productive day on Monday -- the first one since, well, last Monday.
Part one of the "weblogestan" column went up last Tuesday. The rest was substantially drafted -- between my ears, anyway -- when the
flu kicked in.
There is nothing like a series of violent explosions occuring at both ends of the gastrointestinal tract to reduce one's
ardor for composition.
So I got to spend a week living like a cat, at least in regard to sleeping and otherwise remaining at a pre-verbal
level. Also, I got to catch up on the History Channel stuff that TiVo has been recording. That Genghis Khan makes Alexander
the Great look like a wuss.
Attempted to watch the film Ice Station Zebra, which obsessed Howard Hughes. He had his Mormons show it to him
over and over again. That fact has long fascinated me. Norman Mailer interpreted it as a symptom of Hughes's having to master
the trauma of his contact with the internal culture of the CIA, or something like that.
My interpretation is different. I believe it was a symptom of Hughes having the unimaginable resistance to boredom of
the deeply insane. Ice Station Zebra is as exciting as watching paint dry -- only, at three hours,
it takes longer.
Well, it's good to have the use of my faculties again. Wrote part two of the column in a marathon session yesterday.
Here it is.
3 April
Since Tuesday, I've not left the apartment building except to go to the doctor. He said it was just a very bad flu, something
to ride out.
For most of the past week, then, my diet has consisted largely of Gatorade and oatmeal. When Rita brought home a
box of Ritz crackers, it was a really big deal. And when she fixed me a plate of scrambled eggs, it was, for the
duration anyway, the best meal of my life.
No coffee at all. If I didn't already feel like roadkill, the caffeine withdrawl would be brutal.
Haven't been able to read much, and nothing requiring serious concentration. It feels strange, very strange, not to have
spent any time at all with pen in hand. Late in the day, I'll find myself daydreaming about legal pads. (Seriously.)
But I feel too gross actually to go get one, let alone write anything.
Until you lose them, you forget how much of your sense of identity is embedded in small routines.
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